Data objects, which can in some cases be referred to as business objects, can function as core entities for data consumers in some business software applications. Data consumers can include, but are not limited to, user interfaces, form viewers, agents for processing inbound and/or outbound data, and the like. A data object can include one or more data elements. The term data element, as used herein, can refer to any data format, including but not limited to a data object or business object, a node or a root node of a data or business object, meta model entity of a data or business object, and the like. Data elements can have one or more dependencies upon other data elements, often in a uni-directional manner. The term dependency, as used herein, can refer to any unidirectional relationship between data elements, in which a dependent data element accesses data, metadata, data formats or structures, or the like from a depended upon data element. A data element can also include any feature of the meta-model of a business or data object including, but not limited to, a node, an action, a query, an association, an action parameter, a query input parameter, a node element, and the like.
As an example, a data element, such as a data object node, can be both a parent data object node and a child data object node in a web of inter-nodal dependencies and can depend on any number of child data object nodes and have any number of parent data object nodes that depend upon it. In a typical business software system, metadata can be distributed into meta-objects. A where-used list can be used in some systems to ensure metadata consistency and to make dependencies between meta-object instances transparent. Due to the typically one-way nature of inter-element dependencies, the data objects or data elements that depend upon data or data elements in a given data object are usually not known to or stored within that given data object. As used herein, the term “where-used data” refers to an index, listing, or the like that contains information pertaining to associations or dependencies between data elements, for example data objects, nodes, or the like, of an object-based software solution.